A Roadmap for Politics in the 21st Century (Part 2 of 2)

Solidarity and Democracy

The second half of the 20th century was defined, most and foremost, by a long cold war between the world’s two remaining superpowers, the capitalist and democratic United States and the communist and autocratic Soviet Union. The duel was solved in favor of the United States in the last decade of the century, almost suddenly, in the space of two or three years. The contest was not decided on the battlefield, however. In the proxy wars of the cold war era there was often no clear winner, even though one can make the argument that the communist victory in Vietnam put the soviets in the lead as far as military conflicts were concerned. Then again, the Soviet calamitous defeat in Afghanistan a decade or so later arguably hurt the Soviets more than the Vietnam debacle hurt the United States. In any case, in the end it wasn’t a military victory that settled the dispute but rather the social and economic implosion of the Soviet Union driven by its economic shortcomings and its social and independentist tensions. When all was said and done, the American political and economic model worked quite well, whereas in the Soviet Union economic collapse quickly led to the disintegration of the union of Soviet republics created some seven decades earlier. Capitalism triumphed over communism. Democracy triumphed over autocracy and the American model seemed, at least for a short while, the only model. And yet two decades into the 21st century, the right vs left debate seems livelier than ever, and is prevalent in the political battlefields of Europe, the United States and Latin America.

The fight between right and left continues, even if it has changed remarkably. Capitalism won the battle against communism decisively, we should make no mistake about that. With the exception of some of communism’s last bastions, such as Cuba and North Korea, all of the truly important communist countries have either completely abandoned communism or, like Chin, have come up with its own version of a market-driven, semi-communist modern economy. The communism of Lenin, Stalin and Mao, however, is long dead and buried.

And yet the struggle between right and left remains. The matter is that the right and the left have essentially changed. The right today represents a market economy that knows few boundaries. It promotes the rights of corporations, individualism over collectivism and it places a great emphasis on the needs of the economy, often even bove the needs of society at large and certainly above the needs of the environment and the animal kingdom.

The truly relevant left today has parted from its communist roots and settled on the ideal of social democracy. It doesn’t go as far as wanting to abolish private property like the communists of old, yet it does propose an economic system that favors individual needs above the needs of the big corporations. Political leaders such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the United States or Lula da Silva and Dilma Roussef in Brazil have made a name for themselves defending the needs of the poor and the middle-class over the prerogatives of big corporations and the rich. The left today seeks to add a social and collective component to the freedom of the markets and enact laws and promote initiatives that limit the power of corporations.

Meanwhile in Europe, many of the goals of the left in the United States have already been made into a reality, such as universal healthcare and higher education. Countries such as Denmark, Sweden or Switzerland have developed very robust social welfare systems, which coexist with competitive, highly developed market economies.

It is uncertain which side will ultimately win the battle, but right and left are likely to remain at each other’s throats for decades to come. My intention here is certainly not to make an exhaustive argument for either side, yet I would like to make some remarks on the issue of democracy, the economy, and collective solidarity as a guiding principle for modern society.

It makes perhaps the most sense to start with the issue of democracy, since in almost every Western country at least, there is agreement between left and right that democracy is a better system than autocracy. As I pointed out in the last section, even though democracy is not without its flaws, it is better than the alternatives. I also pointed out that even though democracy seems secure today, we should not take it for granted since both in Ancient Rome and Greece and in the early 20th century we saw the fall of proud democracies, often at the hands of powerful demagogues. It is because of this that democratic institutions must always remain strong, and populist leaders with too much power and autocratic tendencies must be vigorously opposed.

It is also very possible that a free-market economy is a necessary condition for a democracy, even though it is obviously not a sufficient condition. As such, if for no other reason, both the modern right and the modern left should be in agreement that the free market is necessary for freedom as well as prosperity to be had, even if the freedom of the market does not need to be, and perhaps should not be, absolute.

The question then is really how much freedom we should actually give the market, and conversely how much should governments intervene in the economy. The right argues that the government should intervene very little and that the market should be given almost absolute freedom. The left argues in favor of more government intervention in order to correct the negative effects produced by a free market economy. Which one is right?

It is beyond the scope of this essay and the capacity of this writer to provide an absolute answer to such a question, yet I will attempt to shine a little bit of light on the issue by making two or three considerations on the subject. The first and most important consideration is that individuals are not islands, everyone is connected to everyone both socially and economically. Hence the libertarian notions of independent economic agents have little to do with how society actually works. As such, the housewife who takes care of her two children receives no pay in dollars or pounds, even though her contribution to society in the form of rearing two of its youngest members is considerable. This example should shine some light on the fact that value to society and economic remuneration are not always, perhaps not even often, aligned. On the opposite side of the spectrum, the successful day-trader who makes thousands of dollars in a given month or week adds no value whatsoever to society, simply profiting from the fluctuations of the stock-market. Effort and contribution are not always repaid proportionally according to the lows of the free market.

In order to function well, a society must prepare its members to perform necessary tasks and should then compensate them in an appropriate manner. In order for this to happen, not everything can be left in the market’s hands. It is the government, not the free market, that must pay the school teacher, the policeman, the mailman, the firmean, the soldier and the magistrate.

It should then be clear at this point that in many ways the market alone is not sufficient as the sole architect of the economy of a country. Any society will need the government to be a participant of the economy, alongside individuals and organizations.

From the moment we admit the vital role of the government in any economy, as we just have, it is silly to suppose that the free-market alone can guide the economy of any society. A healthy and free economy is not a libertarian paradise of unrestricted economic freedom, but a balanced compromise between the several components that make up any society, such as a central government, for-profit enterprises, non-profit associations, private individuals and their families.

It is similarly misguided to suppose that the only two alternatives for any economic system are either pure socialism or unrefrained free-market capitalism. Such a line of thinking is perhaps a legacy of the cold war era and the economic dogmas it produced, yet it has no place in the reality of the third decade of the 21st century and beyond.

In fact, looking at virtually every country in the northern portion of the European continent, and even to the rest of the continent to some extent, we are encouraged to think that a middle way, or as it has also been called “a third way”, is not only possible but highly desirable. A quick glance at Canada, Australia or New Zealand would produce the same result. These nations have added, quite successfully, a social dimension to their competitive free-market economies, expanding the role of the government in areas such as education, healthcare and childcare and also developing a robust network of welfare and social programs. Not only has this proven sustainable, it has also led to societies that can boast of having the highest quality of life indexes in the world.

Economics is a highly complicated and uncertain science so in no way I intend to decipher its mysteries here, lacking both the time and the capacity to do so. Yet, it is not complicated to look at real-world cases and to make sincere assessments on what works and does not work for regular citizens in present day nation-states. As I just mentioned, a sincere assessment of the economies of Northern Europe will lead to the conclusion that a market-driven economy can successfully add and sustain social components without becoming unsuccessful. As such, we should naturally regard it as a possibility to have a thriving market economy on one hand, and having social programs such as public healthcare, wellfare, childcare and higher education on the other. Such an arrangement is currently working in countries all over the world such as Canada, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, France, the United Kingdom, Germany  and many others.

Having established, with the help of irrefutable real-world evidence, that free-market economies can remain competitive whilst incorporating elements of social good such as wide access to healthcare and education, I would like to make my second assertion, which is that “third way” or “middle way”economies work better for the general population than “pure” capitalist or socialist economies.

This second assertion is perhaps not as self-evident as the first and yet a brief comparison between “middle way” or “third way” countries and either pure socialist or capitalist countries gives a definite edge to the more balanced economies. To reach such a conclusion one does not have to resort to overly complex economic, philosophical or political theories of any kind. It suffices to ask ourselves in which country we would prefer to live given the choice or, even better, under which system we would like to live under if we could choose any of the three options for our own country?

Pure socialist or communist countries do not fare well if we apply this rule. It is not a coincidence that most communist countries were either dissolved or changed their economic systems over the course of a century of communism. The most influential of communist countries, the Soviet Union, ended up imploding economically, socially and politically, and was disintegrated into 15 separate republics, all of which dropped communism in its pure form. The second biggest communist power, China, has reinvented itself as its own blend of authoritarianism and  aggressive capitalist tendencies with just a hint of its former socialism. One of the newest members of the communist family, Venezuela, quickly fell into a well of despair filled with economic collapse, social unrest and violent politics bordering on a civil war. The most faithful of communist regimes that remain, Cuba and North Korea, have grown accustomed to varying degrees of poverty, international ostracism, underdevelopment and totalitarianism. It is no surprise that as a result of this the communist doctrine has been largely delegitimized, at least in its “purer” version.

Perhaps a more relevant debate today concerns the comparison between “purer” forms of capitalism such as the American system and more hybrid models like the ones adopted by northern European democracies, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. This debate has largely dominated American politics for the better part of this century and especially in recent years, but it is also prevalent in European and Latin American politics. The right vs left divide is as pronounced now as it ever was. We should then ask ourselves if given the chance we would either 1) prefer to live under under a purer capitalist model with the State providing few social services, with high economic inequality and with corporations yielding immense economic and political power or; 2) we would rather live under a northern European styled model, with an extensive web of social services, low income inequality and a society where corporations have much less economic and political power. 

Both camps have vocal partidaries and ultimately, in spite of the great success achieved in the political, social and economic realm by “third way” economies, one could hardly designate an aggressively capitalist economy such as the United States as a failure. Ultimately, one has to decide between paying fewer taxes or living in a country that provides ample healthcare, childcare, education and other important social services to all its citizens, regardless of economic status. It will also depend on one’s views on income inequality and the growing power of corporations. I feel that I’m unable to deliver any definitive arguments in favor of either option, even though I cannot help but think that balanced economic systems tend to offer the best of both worlds (social justice and economic prosperity), whereas an unrestrained free-market economy delivers a great deal of social injustice along with economic gains which overall seems like the worse deal of the two.

Most importantly, however, at least in my opinion, is the notion of solidarity as a political, social and economic guide for the future of humankind. We’ve spent a great deal not only of the past decade or century but of our all history competing with each other, taking from each other, competing for resources. Most of human history has been marked by the subjugation of one set of people in favor of a different set of people. This is particularly evident in younger societies such as those in the western hemisphere, and yet it is a commonality of the entire human species. For the first time in the history of our species we have the chance of changing that dynamic. Under the auspice of liberalism, democracy, the rule of law, human rights and international cooperation we can start building a world where every single man, woman and child can live with dignity and without fear of starvation, misery and constant violence. This is not yet the world we live in, but we have the chance of building that world. One of the keys to do so is starting to emphasize our commonalities more than our differences, and being more solidary and less selfish.

That applies not only to the world at large, but also for each individual society. In my opinion we already have too much economic disparity between the rich and the poor, we don’t need the gap to grow wider and the middle class to continue to shrink. Modern prosperous economies like the United States owe much of their strength to  thriving middle class, with great political as well as economic power. If the middle class loses its economic and political power in favour of the 1 percent and the big corporations, not only will the economy weaken, democracy will also become more fragile. The notion of democracy, the rule by the people, rests on the idea of a powerful populus, capable of asserting its dominance over the aristocracy or the oligarchy. If the people become powerless, democracy will become nothing but an illusion.

In many developed countries in the world today, things like universal healthcare and childcare, free or affordable higher education, or a strong welfare system are seen as rights conferred to citizens and permanent residents of those countries. In other countries, like the United States, not only do those benefits prove elusive for most of the population, many people argue that they are not rights and should not be a responsibility of the state at all. The result is that many people cannot afford to obtain university degrees, access affordable childcare or even go to the hospital and obtain treatment when sick.

If we abide by the principle of solidarity, we should recognize that a fair community should provide treatment for the sick even if they are poor. In a society that strives for fairness and equality, even the poor should be given the chance to better themselves through education. In a society moved by solidarity, we should recognize that childcare is a social responsibility and that if a person loses his or her job, he or she should not lose the ability to go to a hospital when sick or lose his or her home because he or she cannot make the rent or the mortgage payment that month. Ultimately, we should all have the right and the responsibility to help and be helped, since we are all part of the same community.

The Way Ahead

The Coronavirus pandemic has forced most of us to retreat to our homes and spend a lot of time in isolation along with our families and the other people we share our homes with. Many of us, myself included, will take this time to reflect on what kind of world we would like to return to and this is really what this essay is all about.

For tens of thousands of years humans have played the game of politics by yielding a sword, pointing a spear or aiming a gun at their fellow humans. In the 20th century we added tanks, planes and, perhaps most significantly, atomic bombs to that equation. However, the sheer destructive capacity of modern warfare technology, demonstrated emphatically in two world wars, has forced us to reconsider politics in general and international relations in particular. It is very well possible that, recalling the words of Mao Zedong, political power still grows out of the barrel of a gun, evn in our days. However, it is also true that events like the two world wars, the holocaust, and the invention, use and proliferation of atomic bombs have forced us to reconsider things. We have established mechanisms of international cooperation such as the United Nations and the European Union because we know that war is now too costly, and that we have much more to gain from international collaboration than from a new world war. We must not forget the lessons we learned in the past century, and how much they cost us, or else we may be fated to repeat the same mistakes. Populism and nationalism have made a resurgence in recent years in many countries, so it is particularly important now, maybe more than ever, that we remind ourselves of the dangers posed by nationalism and populism. The way forward is the way of diplomacy and cooperation between nations.

At a time of great economic disruption such as this, we should also consider the ways in which we can create a society that is more prosperous, fairer and more solidary. The right vs left debate rages on in the 21st century, now with different players. Regardless of the outcome or one’s political inclinations, this might be the ideal time to remind ourselves that we all depend on each other. We are not islands of economic activity. The unpaid housewife raising her children contributes to society as much or more than the wall street broker, regardless of salary or the zeros in their bank accounts. In a fair community we should not deny medical treatment to the poor or the unemployed, and we should not deny the poor the possibility of bettering themselves and improving the lives of their families by going to University. Even more importantly, we should not forget that we are all part of the same community and as such we should look out for each other. Public health, public education and public decency affect all, because when we live in a community, our fates are entwined.

Finally, we should look ahead with hope and confidence. More than any other time in our history we have the tools to build a world that is fair, safe and prosperous for all men, women and children, not just one tribe, or one nation, or one ethnicity or one social class. Yet we must not disregard the challenges ahead, some dramatic and global in nature. We cannot keep destroying our own planet with impunity. We must create an economy that is more sustainable and fairer. We cannot give in to fear of the other once more. We cannot give in to the temptation of isolationism or seek quick comfort in nationalism. The world is now global, our challenges are global in nature and we must band together to face them. It is time for more understanding and stricter cooperation between peoples. This should be the age of internationalism and human rights. This should be the time when we finally make politics more human and decide to share all the world has to offer us, if we let it. 

A Roadmap for Politics in the 21st Century (Part 1 of 2)

Politics is an ever changing game. Politics today, as we enter the third decade of the third millennium, is very different from what it looked like 100, 50, 20 or even just 10 years ago. Things change at neck breaking speed and political science and political theory must adapt to those changes.

My intention here is not to provide comprehensive or in-depth analysis. Such undertakings are better dealt with in the realm of academia by political science and political philosophy professors. I am but an observer who wishes to record some of his observations in an informal way. Hopefully these observations might prove interesting to other interested observers of world events and politics, but even if that is not the case, writing down one’s thoughts has the minimum value of helping to solidify and crystallize one’s ideas.  

I’ve always been intrigued by the nation of creating a roadmap for the future. The great visions and ideals have always appealed to me a great deal more than the finepoints and the minutia of details. As such, in line with the personal tendency of the writer, this simple essay deals with general points rather than specifics. The general idea here is to provide an approximation of a roadmap for politics in the times to come.

I’m also not particularly interested in the political struggles and bickerings of a specific nation, but of the whole world. As I see myself as a citizen of the world, I cannot help but regard politics as being a global affair, concerning all the men, women and children of the world, not just those of a particular nation. In fact, out of all my notions, none is more prevalent than this idea of politics as a global phenomenon and all the things that it entails.

The Globalization of Politics

For better or worse, the history of mankind in the past 500 years has been marked, most and foremost, by a process of globalization. After millenia of relative isolation, practically all the cultures in the world have in the past five centuries been inevitably linked to each other in one way or another, economically, culturally, technologically, militarily and politically.

Five centuries ago. Give or take, the world was divided, geographically, culturally and politically, in a number of more or less self-contained areas or civilizations. Previous to Columbus’ discovery of the Americas in 1492, all pre-columbian American civilizations were completely separated from the rest of the world and were carving their own civilizational path that had begun over 10,000 years ago or so when the first humans crossed into the Americas for the first time from Northeast Asia. Even amongst pre-columbian American civilizations, there was a considerable degree of isolation imposed by the great distances that separate North, Central and South America. The indian tribes of North-America had little contact with the more advanced meso-american civilizations and those in turn had likely little contact and knowledge of south-American civilizations in their varying degrees of development. Even in South America, the more advanced civilizations of the west would probably have little or no contact with the predominantly hunter-gatherer tribes of the eastern part of South America such as the Tupi-Guarani in the territory of modern-day Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina. Also, in the North-America that predated Columbus’ arrival, contact was either minimal or inexistent between civilizations of different territories such as the Caribbean, the Arctic or the Central Plains region.  

In the world pre-1500, relative isolation was a feature not just of the American civilizations but of most parts of the world. Before the first European traders and explorers reached the shores of India, China, Siam, Japan and Indonesia, there had been minimal contact and interaction between the civilizations of Europe and Asia. Up until then, contact between Europeans and Eastern Asians had been almost null and mediated by the Middle Eastern kingdoms and empires that stood in-between them. Sub-saharan African peoples also remained out of the grasp of Europeans up until the mid to late 15th century, when the first European explorers, mostly Portuguese and Spaniards, were able to overcome for the first time the difficulties of long-distance sea exploration and reach further and further into the southern top of Africa and beyond. Australian aborigines remained in isolation even longer, not having come in contact with European explorers and settlers until much later in history. When they did, unfortunately for them, the more advanced Europeans relegated them into a state of subservience at best and annihilation at worst, much like what had previously occurred in the Americas.

If the world before the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was marked by the development of many different and relatively isolated civilizations in Europe, the MiddleEast, America, Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Australia, the european explorer-conquerors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries would change all that. European colonies were established in North and South America, the great mesoamerican and andine civilizations of old swiftly fell to the Spanish conquistadores, and the initial Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch trade posts in sub-saharan Africa, India and East Asia eventually morphed into full-fledged European colonial empires and a global network of war, trade and cultural and technological exchange. 

Since the great period of exploration and discovery of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, two major political cataclysms have changed the nature of global politics. The first was the eclosion of political and cultural revolutions that transformed the whole world in the late eighteenth century, namely the American and French revolutions. The second, and even more significant disruption occurred in the first half of the 20th century, as two world wars and one great global economic crisis gave rise to fascism and communism and provoked the fall of the great European colonial powers that had ruled the world for five centuries. As the British, French, Dutch, Austrian and German empires collapsed, the newly formed communist union of Soviet republics and the capitalist American super-power took the mantle of world leadership in the second half of the 20th century. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the last decade of the past century, the world entered a new millenium led by a powerful United States of America and with liberal-democracy fully implemented in most of the world.The nationalist and fascist movements of the first half of the twentieth century, namely those in Germany, Italy in Japan were obliterated by means of warfare in WWII. In spite of a later resurgence of fascism in the form of military dictatorships throughout Latin America and surviving fascist regimes in southern Europe, the later half of the 20th century would be marked by the uneasy coexistence of two world views. In the West, the world became increasingly capitalist, democratic and globalized. In the East, under Soviet leadership, the world was communist and totalitarian. In any case, globalism and not nationalism won the day and shaped the fortunes of most of the world going into the twenty-first century. A global system of international trade and diplomacy emerged and globalization has advanced politically, economically, culturally and technologically.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early nineties, it seemed that liberal-democracy, globalization and capitalism would become the guiding lights of the 21st century. Francis Fukuyama famously celebrated the End of History and the struggles of the human race. 

This, of course, was not to be. The new Russia grew increasingly authoritarian and anti-Western under Putin. China, under a neo-communist totalitarian regime, became a new super-power and has emerged as a credible alternative to Western liberal-democracies. The Middle-East has become engulfed in war and religious extremism and is becoming increasingly anti-Western. Capitalism is no longer an unquestioned model, especially as a major economic crisis in 2008-10 and in current times have put the system to the test and global economic inequality has gone rampant. And, perhaps most surprisingly of all, in several European nations and in the United States the far-right has gained ground, to a great extent bolstered by increasing anti-immigration and anti-globalization feelings. Nationalism has made a comeback and new leaders of important western democracies were elected on nationalist platforms, with Donald Trump’s “America First” policy and Boris Johnson’s pro-Brexit and anti European Union stance leading the way.

As I write this, in the middle of a global pandemic and during this unprecedented economic crisis, neither liberal-democracy, nor globalization nor international cooperation seem like safe bets anymore. Nationalism, xenophobia and isolationism have once again seized the day and the future is uncertain once again. There is no doubt that the globalization process of the last five centuries cannot be reversed. We live in a global world whether we want it or not. The only question is how we react to this fact, either by resorting to isolanist and nationalistic policies or by embracing internationalism.

It would be a mistake for us, humans, to go back to the past and make the same mistakes that our ancestors have made. The rise of nationalism and its hyperbolic form, fascism, in the first half of the past century ended up in catastrophe as events such as World War II and the Holocaust attest to. Almost as a way of reminding us of the dangers of nationalism, the Yoguslavian wars in the last decade of the 20th century, extremely nationalistic, also resulted in genocide and widespread misery for all of those involved. Even more subdued fascist regimes such as those in Portugal, Spain or Greece resulted in decades of loss of personal freedom and repression and are generally thought of as a very bad experience for those nations. More recent fascist regimes, mostly in Latin America, have also led to human tragedy, albeit perhaps not to the degree experienced by Europeans in the thirties and forties. Even so, to this day hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Argentinians, Chileans, Brazilians, Peruvians and other Latin-Americans remember the atrocities they or their families and friends had to endure under the rule of the Latin-American fascist regimes of the mid to late 20th century. 

Democracy is far from perfect. Modern liberal democracy certainly has its flaws. Yet compared to the alternatives it is probably still our best bet by a long shot. As Churchill said, our democratic systems may be terrible, yet they are still much better than the alternatives.

One could also make the argument that nationalism must not necessarily lead to its more extreme form. Perhaps we can have nationalism and democracy, a situation we have seemingly now in countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Hungary and Austria. Yet it is much too soon to know if such an arrangement is possible on the long-term or if nationalism, as time progresses, naturally reverts to authoritarianism as it has in the past.

However, looking at the foremost current nationalistic leaders of democracies such as Trump in the United States and Bolsonaro in Brazil, it is easy to see authoritarianism tendencies displayed both in words and deeds. We should not take democracy for granted as people did in Spain, Germany, Italy or Portugal in the first half of the 20th century. Even though our democracies today are older and stronger than those of the early 20th century, like the Weimar Republic or the Second Spanish Republic, nationalism and fascism have destroyed democracies in the past and could do it again in the future. Even the oldest of republics can die as history, going as far back as the Ancient World can teach us. Democracy died in Athens and Rome millenia before Mussolini and Hitler were born. We must always be in the lookout for the Hitlers and Mussolinis of the future and stop them before they get too strong.

There are, however, even deeper reasons why our future should be determined by organizations such as the United Nations and the European Unionand not by isolationist and nationalistic demagogs. In a world that is as globalized and interlinked as ours today, insisting on isolationism is as foolish as it is dangerous. Problems such as global warming, nuclear proliferation, global pandemics such as the current one, international terrorism or even international economic crisis such as the one we are about to face, must be dealt with not by nations individually but rather by international cooperation. Global problems can only be solved by all the nations working together to reduce global carbon emissions, enact measures of social distancing during a global pandemic or reduce the amount of nuclear bombs in stand by in the world’s militaries. The more globalized our societies become the bigger the need for global mechanisms of political action is.  

On a slightly more philosophical note, it is also important to acknowledge that moving away from national interests in favor of humanity’s interests is also natural and desirable from the standpoint of our evolutionary journey. As we become more enlightened as a species we must necessarily move from the tribe, to the city, to the country, to the world. Technology has allowed us to greatly enlarge our scope as individuals and the widening perspectives that we acquire as individuals must be reflected on our political institutions. 1000 years ago the ordinary person would probably never travel much farther than a couple hundred miles from where they were born their whole lives. As such, it made sense that their vision of the world was quite small and firmly rooted and determined by a small number of people and by few and simple ideas. Today, however, most people have the opportunity to not only travel to different continents and live in different countries than they were born in, they are also able to access the knowledge and the culture of the whole world simply by browsing the internet, going to the local library or even by turning on their smart TVs.

As our consciousness evolves, it makes sense to acknowledge our common humanity, regardless of one’s place of birth, color of skin, native language, religion or nationality. Specially as globalization accelerates our experiences as humans become increasingly connected. Today an American boy who grew up watching Anime and playing video games will probably have more in common with his Japanese counterpart than with the football player he goes to highschool with. And regardless of our differences and our similarities, there is nevertheless tremendous value in acknowledging that we share a common humanity which transcends nationality. As such, we are better served by taking a humanist approach of the future, rather than one that is nationalistic, and politics should be a reflection of that.

Fortunately, for the first time in history, we are in a position that allows us to effectively conduct policies of government that favor all of humankind and not just a portion of it. The only thing we need is the political will to pursue this course of action, but the foundation for international cooperation and global governance has already been laid out.

Much of that was a direct result of the bloodiest and most costly event in human history (both in lives and material possessions). World War II showcased the dangers of unchecked nationalism and the absolute necessity for some sort of mechanism of global governance in the age of industrial warfare and nuclear bombs. The millions of lives lost in the war bought the necessary goodwill and awareness that led to the creation of the two most important and most powerful international organizations in human history, the United Nations and the European Union. These mechanisms of international governance have been successful so far in establishing tools that allow the different countries in the world to solve their conflicts in a peaceful manner and to work together in order to solve common problems. This should be seen as the first step in our journey to develop a system of global governance that prevents world wars from happening and allows for the protection of human rights worldwide. 

If humankind is to have a long and prosperous future, then we need to think beyond the nation. We need to think and act globally, both as individuals and as governments. Global cooperation and supranational organizations are the future. We must work together in order to solve common problems and not fight against each other. The foreign policy of modern liberal-democracies, and in fact all the nations in the world, should pursue this goal as its primary objective.